Dear readers, I'm sober right now. It's a strange feeling because it's one a.m. I mean, I'm tired but not quite ready to pass out, I am not really thinking up any good jokes. I still don't really feel like washing my face or brushing my teeth, which I kind of expected to be easy, given the little skirmish the amphetamines and nicotine are waging against my gums. You know, now that I think about it, I am going to brush my teeth. It's not so bad once you stand up. And look! I just stood up without getting the spins. How did this happen? I took two Campral moderation pills this evening. You're supposed to take six a day, but they're expensive and I like my moderation in moderation. Which is why, um, I have taken approximately eight Campral pills since picking up my prescription on May 11. (If anyone wants to buy/trade for Adderall... um take your illegal activity elsewhere!) Because, you see, they sort of work for me. Which I take from their shitty reputation among real alcoholics to mean I am not actually a real alcoholic, just someone who needs to take a break once in awhile. Like Lindsay! To whom I am dedicating this post.

In my experience, Campral, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2004 and peddled by Forest Laboratories, significantly quiets both the "Oh my god there's a bottle of wine in the same room as me and I really really really love wine" voice and the "Holy shit this glass of wine is almost halfway done and I really really need to know there's more coming!" voice that likes to taunt me when I'm making a conscious effort not to drink, replacing them with a new voice that just says "Water. Water. Water. Water. Water" while another one intermittently whispers "Are you being fun? Do you think you're as fun when you're not drinking? Oh, what's that, a yawn? Don't you think you should maybe go home now that you're not really feeling fun? Do you think anyone notices the effort you're making?"

I don't know how Campral works. The literature peddled by Forest says something like "no one knows." I think this is common language for literature on pharmacology drugs, which is very comforting. Anyway, so it fucks with your brain. I found out about it because I went to a shrink in hopes of getting help with my attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, not that I believe in ADHD since I read this book Generation Rx and generally distrust corporations since I had to make a living listening to them tell investors how they planned to squeeze 3 more points of operating margin out of their customers every fiscal quarter. But my mom, who is a schoolteacher, feels quite sure that as a child I had a pretty virulent strain of the "disorder," and anyway this is my job. So I needed Adderall, and my shrink, who is a nice lady but a total pawn of the pharmaceutical sales reps, not only refused to prescribe the generic form of Adderall in favor of the $1.25-a-milligram extended release version, she wrote up a prescription for Campral, which turns out to be so ineffective in most people that it's a subject of regular mockery on the message boards frequented by the pharmaceutical reps whose job it is to sell it:

And yet here I sit, sober as Brigham Young himself, all thanks to the placebo effect, which is almost as good as being sober due to the triumph of my own mighty willpower. If a sugar pill can still have an effect on an amphetamine-addicted veteran boozer like myself, it can work for you, Linds. If not to get you off the coke, at least to get you off that shithead Calum Best!